


love whispered through the smoke

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Mollcroft, Oneshot, Post-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Post-Season/Series 02, Unrequited Love, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: Dinner at the Diogenes Club, and coffee on the roof.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Molly Hooper
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	love whispered through the smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eliza_doolittlethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliza_doolittlethings/gifts).



_Dinner at the Diogenes Club, 8PM_ Mycroft texted her.

_Sounds good!_ Molly replied, fervently hoping that that conveyed excitement without desperation. 

Googling the Diogenes Club didn't help. It had no official website, and very few relevant search results. (Most of the results were about Diogenes the Cynic, after whom she assumed the club was named.) She found its location, but was it a black tie occasion? Smart casual? Cocktail dress? She knew she should text Mycroft and ask, but all of a sudden she felt too shy. _What should I wear?_ sounded indecisive. _What do you want me to wear?_ sounded far too flirtatious. _Black tie?_ sounded like she was asking what black tie was. _What's the dress code?_ sounded to her like she was implying she'd wear a shellsuit unless he told her exactly what was allowed and what was not. Besides, Mycroft was the British Government, he had better things to do with his time than answer all her questions. Molly wished she had his assistant's number.

Meena stepped in to help, with all the perfect timing of the cavalry in _Lord of the Rings_. She found the perfect dress in her wardrobe, and helped Molly to pin up her updo when it collapsed for the third time.

"Pearls?"

"What, and have the other diners thinking I'm his wife?"

"Fur stole?"

"Save that for when he takes me to the opera," Molly joked. She found a plain silver chain that her father had bought her, and decided that would suit best.

Still, she couldn't help the nerves as she waited for the car. She gave herself a little pep talk, reminded herself that she was Dr Margaret Olivia Hooper of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, colleague of Dr John Watson and Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, and worthy of any stuffed shirt's respect. 

Even if Mycroft would have to direct her to the correct fork.

Molly felt a little jolt in her stomach when the driver opened the door and Mycroft wasn't there. She reassured herself that he must be at the Club already, of course he was, he must have been working there today. It would be the most practical way of squeezing her in.

At eight on the dot, the club's porter ushered her over the threshold and Mycroft entered the hall from a door down the corridor. He smiled at her, and offered her his arm. She took it, and he led her up the stairs.

"We will be dining in the Turkish Room," he informed her. "The menu tonight is Moroccan, but it's the only room we can dine in privately this week. I neglected to send you the menu, I'm afraid, but I deduced you would not be cooking anything Moroccan until your workload lightens in the summer."

The room in question was strikingly different from the rest of the club, lined with Victorian tiles in colourful geometric patterns and fanned with potted palms. It looked rather like the Turkish baths she'd seen in her hairdresser's travel magazines. 

After the tagine was served and the waiter left the room, Mycroft informed her of Sherlock's travels. (Molly had never thought to cook lamb with apricots and raisins, but the meal before her was so delicious that if Mycroft left the room she'd have shovelled it into her mouth.) He was careful to leave out classified details- names, appearances, unclosed cases, anything that was covered by the Thirty Year Rule and beyond her defined need to know. There had been trouble in Montenegro that somehow managed to implicate twelve governments at the same time, but Sherlock slipped out undetected. The Red-Headed League had been soundly defeated, and Sherlock was now playing cloak and dagger with the Spider Woman.

"I do not want a repeat of the last time Sherlock's opponent was a beautiful woman," Mycroft grumbled.

Molly wasn't quite sure why she felt strange when Mycroft said that. She had never heard Mycroft allude to anything to do with beauty or desire before. She stared at her napkin. She had had a lunch date the day before. It hadn't gone well. Molly felt rather naughty, having two dates in as many days, but of course this wasn't a _real_ date. "I promised Sherlock that I would look after you," Mycroft had told her not long after the fall. If she had been younger she might have felt patronised by that, but instead she felt comforted. _This is out of duty_ she reminded herself when Mycroft made pleasant conversation about her week, her reading, her research, even when they made each other laugh, even when they had a playful argument about which room in the house should house the washing machine. ("In the _kitchen_?" Mycroft exclaimed with debatably sincere horror. "You might as well keep it in the dining room or the sitting room if you're prepared to have it in the _kitchen_.")

Mycroft rose suddenly after dessert. 

"Are we leaving?" Molly blurted out, her heart thumping in her ears. 

"Forgive me, I should have said. I usually take my coffee on the roof, when I have dinner here."

"Roof it is, then."

The Diogenes Club was just four storeys high, but the view from the roof had a beauty of its own, looking across elegant townhouses and a wide green park, now black with shadows. Molly imagined all the times over the years when Mycroft must have stood where she was standing now, looking out across the city. The only things on the roof were a small table and a single folding chair. A waiter brought up their coffee on a tray, and a second followed with a chair for her. She thanked them, and resisted the temptation to joke that if they hadn't brought the chair, she'd just have to make do with sitting on his lap instead, and wouldn't that be dangerous with hot coffee?

There was an intimacy to the little eyrie, despite its emptiness. _Has he ever wept up here?_ She would never dream of asking. Still, she supposed she could dare to ask anything, in a place as dark as this one. The only light was from the moon, and a tiny antique lamp on the table illuminating the steam from the coffee pot. 

Mycroft idly patted his coat pocket. Molly smiled.

"You can have a cigarette, if you want one. I'll sit upwind."

Mycroft smiled over his coffee cup.

"Let's not have another date," her lunch date had said by way of goodbye. "I really don't think you're interested in me. I think you've got someone else on your mind."

"I am interested in you," she had insisted.

The cigarette flared red in the black, and in that spark Molly realised who had been on her mind. By the time he had delicately exhaled, everything made sense. If she had been younger, the realisation of unrequited love would have depressed her, and filled the depression with embarrassment and inadequacy. The Sherlock phase all over again. Now, Molly was simply happy to have him in the world, his silliness and his solemnity, to have him walking in the streets or sitting in this club, to have the hush of his meetings and the long silence of his thought. Molly knew that Mycroft didn't love her, that the thought of loving her, or of her loving him, had never even crossed his mind. That was alright. She didn't need him to love her back for her to be happy. She had love enough for both of them.


End file.
